Today we’d like to introduce you to Ava Dellaira
Hi Ava, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
When my mother died suddenly the summer after I graduated college, I abandoned my PHD applications in favor of poetry, which seemed like the only medium that could give voice to my grief. I was accepted to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where I lived in Kurt Vonnegut’s old farm house and fell ever more deeply in love with language. During my time at Iowa, I also discovered that I wanted to explore the power of words and stories beyond the medium of poetry, to connect with a broader audience, to help others who might be grieving, too. Upon graduating at 26, I returned to the city where I was born—LA—to chase my dreams with the other dreamers. (I’d grown up in Albuquerque). Los Angeles seemed like the kind of place where you might walk through a revolving door and come out as someone else on the other side. I hoped to break into the world of screenwriting. After doing odd jobs and getting denied for any number of opportunities, I landed an interview with the screenwriter, director and novelist Stephen Chbosky to be his assistant. I showed up 30 minutes early to the Coffee Bean in West Hollywood and spilled coffee on my shirt, then frantically tried to wash it out and dry it with the hand dryer in the bathroom. Steve took a chance on me, anyway. Over the four years I worked for him, I got to help to help produce his movie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and when I showed him my first attempt at a screenplay, he suggested I write a novel. I did—Love Letters to the Dead. The book, in which I processed buried memories and my own grief over losing my mom, was a surprise success. I still get letters from young people all over the world telling me how the story changed their lives.
By the time I started my third novel, Exposure (my debut in adult fiction), which came out just this month, I was married to the love of my life and in the throes of new motherhood. I gave birth to our daughter, and then, in the time I was still writing, to our son. All writing is a wild leap of faith—will anyone ever read the thing you are pouring so many hours and so much of your heart into? Will the story ever work? Will it connect with anyone, will it matter? It was one kind of leap of faith when I was writing my first novel and it was just me alone in my tiny studio apartment in the wee hours after long days at work. But the leap of faith required to write Exposure felt different—almost Herculean at times. How could I work for years on a story that may or may not ever be published with two young children—babies, at the beginning—who wanted and needed me? I had the incredible, fortunate gift of help from my mother in law—without which writing would not have been possible for me. Still, to take time away from my small children who did not want me to go to work on a thing that may or may not have ever be read felt downright insane sometimes. It made me feel ill sometimes. And yet I pressed on in writing it—partly because I needed writing in order to process the wild, feverish love of young motherhood, and the simultaneous loss of my father, my second parent, to cancer. But also because there was something in the story and characters of Exposure that had grabbed hold of me, and would not let go. It took me six years to write the book, and now that it has just made its entrance into the word, I am filled with the electrical feeling of all that I poured into it, of all the work I hope for it to do in the world.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
My journey, like most, has been full of bumps and challenges! My second novel was not the same commercial success as my first. It came out when I was pregnant with my husband and my first child, and after she was born, my husband became the primary breadwinner, and I the primary care giver. And yet, even in the throes of new motherhood, a part of me clung to my identity as a writer, to my deep need for writing as a form of creative expression. I was determined that I’d write my third book. The challenge of taking time away from my small children in order to write, which I described in the previous answer, was made more intense by having to pick myself up after a prior failure–at least by some measures–and the added uncertainty that comes along with that. I mentioned this in my last answer as well, but writing through the intense grief of parental loss has been another challenge for me.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a novelist who has written two young adult books: Love Letters to the Dead and In Search of Us, and a recent adult debut novel, Exposure. (I have also done some screenwriting work in both film and television, adapting my YA novels for Temple Hill and Fox, and 7th Sun and ABC Studios, respectively.)
I am proud of the way that people have told me my work has made them feel seen, has helped them see others, has helped them to feel less alone in their grief, and has altered their lives in ways large and small. The goal of my newest offering, Exposure, is to help people to see the human beings on the other side of any of the many battle lines we have drawn, to hold space for the possibility of multiple truths that might coexist. And, most of all, to lean into empathy for others–even those who see the world from a different point of view than we do.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I love that LA is a city of strivers–strivers of so many stripes. I love the sense of possibility that pervades all of its diverse parts. I love its diverse parts, the way you can drive down Sunset Blvd from downtown to the ocean and move through so many different worlds. I love that people can come from so many different places and become Angelenos. I love the mountains and parks and the palm trees and, of course, the coast. The taco trucks and ice cream shops and the long lines at In-N-Out and the farmers market cuisine. I love the farmers markets! I love the movie theaters, eating popcorn at 10 am on a Saturday and getting lost in a story.
The only thing to complain about is the thing everyone complains about, haha–the traffic!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.avadellaira.com
- Instagram: ava.dellaira
Image Credits
Karis McPherson @AuthorKaris, LIFTed UNITED. (Karis took the two images marked as Lum images)
